‘The Young Pope’: A Radical Conservative Rules

As much an HBO fantasy piece as Game of Thrones, The Young Pope is a novel exploration of what it might be like for Rome to name an American pope who is embodied by a British actor. The actor is Jude Law, his un-pope-ish name is Lenny, and he arrives at the Vatican with the only person he trusts in the world: a nun played by Diane Keaton. An avowed conservative who seems also to be homophobic, the new pope confounds everyone around him — except perhaps his mentor, Cardinal Spencer, played by James Cromwell, who observes that “the young are always more extreme than the old.” Lenny — his chosen name is Pope Pius XIII — puffs on cigarettes and doesn’t mind blowing smoke at the niceties of papal decorum and traditions.